Welcome to the Orioles Nation Forums! Like most online communities, you must register to post on our message board. However, posting is free--it always will be--and registration is a simple process. Become part of the growing Orioles Nation community and register now!

If you look at a list of all stars over the last ten years you will find that about 20% of them are international signings. Don't you think that signing one Hanley Ramírez or Felix Hernandez would have resulted in at least one winning season?

No I don't think that alone would give us a winning season. For most of the Latin American signings they still require development within the farm system and that goes back to the original problem I brought up. Also, for every international success there are more busts that aren't brought up. Most of the big names also were huge contracts that with our budget wouldn't make sense to take the risk on. They become a de facto free agent signing and we have already talked about how iffy those are because they are projections. Spending more money on the international front does not guarantee a winning season in that time frame.

ofahn wrote:If you look at a list of all stars over the last ten years you will find that about 20% of them are international signings. Don't you think that signing one Hanley Ramírez or Felix Hernandez would have resulted in at least one winning season?

One player would not have made a difference. Multiple players would have.

ofahn wrote:If you look at a list of all stars over the last ten years you will find that about 20% of them are international signings. Don't you think that signing one Hanley Ramírez or Felix Hernandez would have resulted in at least one winning season?

One player would not have made a difference. Multiple players would have.

maybe in the season (i believe 2004) where we won 78 games it would have. But otherwise, I agree.

ofahn wrote:If you look at a list of all stars over the last ten years you will find that about 20% of them are international signings. Don't you think that signing one Hanley Ramírez or Felix Hernandez would have resulted in at least one winning season?

One player would not have made a difference. Multiple players would have.

maybe in the season (i believe 2004) where we won 78 games it would have. But otherwise, I agree.

Maybe, but even at .500 the team would have still been around 20 games back so it wouldn't have made a difference.

Yes, but those players would still be here as part of a better team, or would have been traded for other younger talent that would be on the roster now. How many holes could we fill if we would have a Hanley Ramírez or Felix Hernandez to trade?

Is Hanley even worth that much in a trade at this point? His defense has never been anything great, his bat was bad last year, and he has major attitude problems.Felix would get a nice catch but it's not like the O's are good at player development.

For every Felix Hernandez and Hanley Ramirez (who would have been a better trading chip earlier in his career), there is a Joel Guzman or a Wilson Betemit. These were high profile international signings that have not produced at the major league level. This is why a big international signing does not guarantee a winning season especially with our other problems.

Perhaps I'm not doing a good job of making my point. You build winning teams by adding young talent. I hope NO ONE would argue that point.

If we could have added one player like Hanley Ramírez or Felix Hernandez and another two like Jonathon Schoop IN THE LAST FOURTEEN YEARS we almost certainly would have had at least ONE winning season in that time and would have more talent from which to build a winner now. Your point about bad player development is valid but Duquette will almost certainly make that one of the first issues he addresses, and we can expect it to improve quickly. IF he had more veteran talent on the 25 man roster to trade for prospects he could supplement the next wave of talent (The Cavalry: The Sequel) due in 2014.

You build winners by finding young talent from EVERY POSSIBLE SOURCE. Our failure to do that over the past fourteen years has been a significant cause of the losing seasons during that period.

we must keep in mind that we also dont have the budget to go after a lot of international signings. we got lucky with shoop, but most of the good ones are expensive. we can blame that on a thrifty angelos but that is the reality